APPLICATION OF PLACEBO EFFECT INTERFACE DESIGN IN IMPROVING THE USER EXPERIENCE

The Internet is a virtual architecture of the real world. Traditional designers often transplant real-life experiences into Internet product design to reduce learning costs. The user interface is the language of communication between the two worlds. The user experience can make the virtual world communicate more smoothly with the real world. It is difficult for designers to balance user needs with business needs if they rely solely on traditional life experiences. Because both are competing for users' time. Thus, we can balance the needs of both parties by using the placebo effect to reduce the anxiety of the user waiting. This article takes the loading method of APP startup page as an example, from the perspective of Internet interface design and user experience, to explore how to optimize the user experience and reduce anxiety. Using the questionnaire method and the sounding thinking method to obtain the user's data. The correlation between different requirements was obtained by using the Likert scale and One-factor dependent sample ANOVA. The Kano model was used to classify the data into different levels of requirements. This study has contributed to the study of user experience in optimizing the loading interface

Dynamic Interactions for Network Visualization and Simulation

Most network visualization suites do not interact with a simulator, as it executes. Nor do they provide an effective user interface that includes multiple visualization functions. The subject of this research is to improve the network visualization presented in the previous research [5] adding these capabilities to the framework. The previous network visualization did not have the capability of altering specific visualization characteristics, especially when detailed observations needed to be made for a small part of a large network. Searching for a network event in this topology might cause large delays leading to lower quality user interface. In addition to shortfalls in handling complex network events, [5] did not provide dynamic user interactions since it did not have real-time interaction with a simulator. These shortfalls motivate the development of a new network visualization framework design that provides a more robust user interface, network observation tools and an interaction with the simulator. Our research presents the design, development and implementation of this new network visualization framework to enhance network scenarios and provide interaction with NS-2, as it executes. From the interface design perspective, this research presents a prototype design to ease the implementation process of the framework. The visualization functions such as clustering, filtering, labeling and color coding help accessing network objects and events, supporting four tabs consisting of buttons, menus, and sliders. The new network visualization framework design gives the ability to handle the inherent complexity of large networks, allowing the user to interact with the current display of the framework, alter visualization parameters and control the network through the visualization. In our application, multiple visualizations are linked to NS-2 to build execution scenarios which let to test clustering, filtering, labeling functionalities on separate visualization screens, as NS-2 progresses

Content Discovery in Online Services: A Case Study on a Video on Demand System

Video-on-demand services have gained popularity in recent years for the large catalogue of content they offer and the ability to watch them at any desired time. Having many options to choose from may be overwhelming for the users and affect negatively the overall experience. The use of recommender systems has been proven to help users discover relevant content faster. However, content discovery is affected not only by the number of choices, but also by the way the content is displayed to the user. Moreover, the development of recommender systems has been commonly focused on increasing their prediction accuracy, rather than the usefulness and user experience. This work takes on a user-centric approach to designing an efficient content discovery experience for its users. The main contribution of this research is a set of guidelines for designing the user interface and recommender system for the aforementioned purpose, formulated based on a user study and existing research. The guidelines were additionally translated into interface designs, which were then evaluated with users. The results showed that users were satisfied with the proposed design and the goal of providing a better content discovery experience was achieved. Moreover, the guidelines were found feasible by the company in which the research was conducted and thus have a high potential to work in a real product. With this research, I aim to highlight the importance of improving the content discovery process both from the perspective of the user interface and a recommender system, and encourage researchers to consider the user experience in those aspects

Investigations of collaborative design environments: A framework for real-time collaborative 3D CAD

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This research investigates computer-based collaborative design environments, in particular issues of real-time collaborative 3D CAD. The thesis first presents a broad perspective of collaborative design environments with a preliminary case study of team design activities in a conventional and a computer mediated setting. This study identifies the impact and the feasibility of computer support for collaborative design and suggests four kinds of essential technologies for a successful collaborative design environment: information-sharing systems, synchronous and asynchronous co- working tools, project management systems, and communication systems. A new conceptual framework for a real-time collaborative 3D design tool, Shared Stage, is proposed based upon the preliminary study. The Shared Stage is defined as a shared 3D design workspace aiming to smoothly incorporate shared 3D workspaces into existing individual 3D workspaces. The addition of a Shared Stage allows collaborating designers to interact in real-time and to have a dynamic and interactive exchange of intermediate 3D design data. The acceptability of collaborative features is maximised by maintaining consistency of the user interface between 3D CAD systems. The framework is subsequently implemented as a software prototype using a new software development environment, customised by integrating related real-time and 3D graphic software development tools. Two main components of the Shared Stage module in the prototype, the Synchronised Stage View (SSV) and the Data Structure Diagram (DSD), provide essential collaborative features for real-time collaborative 3D CAD. These features include synchronised shared 3D representation, dynamic data exchange and awareness support in 3D workspaces. The software prototype is subsequently evaluated to examine the usefulness and usability. A range of quantitative and qualitative methods is used to evaluate the impact of the Shared Stage. The results, including the analysis of collaborative interactions and user perception, illustrate that the Shared Stage is a feasible and valuable addition for real-time collaborative 3D CAD. This research identifies the issues to be addressed for collaborative design environments and also provides a new framework and development strategy of a novel real-time collaborative 3D CAD system. The framework is successfully demonstrated through prototype implementation and an analytical usability evaluation.Financial support from the Department and from the UK government through the Overseas Research Studentship Awards

A training model of an automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) with customized warehouse management system (WMS)

AS/RS is a key industrial automation system that has drastically reduced the workforce needed to run a warehouse. Via a computer-controlled system, many intensive labour jobs are taken over by the system, including tediously moving and sorting heavy load from the minute of receving until shipping to customers, intensive paperwork to record goods receiving and order receipts. Somehow, in real business, the system is always complex in the perspective of engineering considerations, depending on the nature of the business, tending to upgrading and modification from time to time. It is desirable that the engineering training curve would provide an engineer perspective in industry design concepts and contemporary teclmologies to the students, not in the operator prospective. This project is intended to develop a training model of AS/RS for the engineering students. The learning curves are provided through three levels in the system integration. The device level illustrates basic input and output devices that are carefully choosen. The controller level processes all input information from the input devices and host computer. The supervisory level implements graphic user interface for system monitoring and control for the operator. The training model also emphasizes in three design concepts, flexibility, expand ability and modularity. Flexibility will allow a broad spectrum of application environments and extend application life. Expandability will allow application in areas not yet defined. Modularity will enhance modification and maintenance

Taking a New-Generation Manager Perspective to Develop Interface Designs

Digital natives are increasingly populating organizations’ management. As they have higher expectations with respect to IS accommodating their (non-functional) user preferences, interfaces of management support systems (MSS) are becoming more important. We develop design guidelines for new MSS interfaces from a new-generation manager perspective. We compile a set of requirements from a literature review and based on a multiple-case study we synthesize five guidelines: (1) use sparklines to present information at a glance and complement them with tooltips to access details, (2) support economic value-added concepts as a “must-have” and be aware that self-service predictive analyses make them more valuable, (3) draw managers’ attention to critical events in real-time by sending notifications to their smart devices, (4) to harvest the knowledge of different users, integrate collaboration capabilities into MSS interface designs, (5) align different information media with managers’ device selection and do not forget their mobile offline use situations

Designing the Sakai Open Academic Environment: A distributed cognition account of the design of a large scale software system

Social accounts of technological change make the flexibility and openness of interpretations the starting point of an argument against technological determinism. They suggest that technological change unfolds in the semantic domain, but they focus on the social processes around the interpretations of new technologies, and do not address the conceptual processes of change in interpretations. The dissertation presents an empirically grounded case study of the design process of an open-source online software platform based on the framework of distributed cognition to argue that the cognitive perspective is needed for understanding innovation in software, because it allows us to describe the reflexive and expansive contribution of conceptual processes to new software and the significance of professional epistemic practices in framing the direction of innovation. The framework of distributed cognition brings the social and cognitive perspectives together on account of its understanding of conceptual processes as distributed over time, among people, and between humans and artifacts. The dissertation argues that an evolving open-source software landscape became translated into the open-ended local design space of a new software project in a process of infrastructural implosion, and the design space prompted participants to outline and pursue epistemic strategies of sense-making and learning about the contexts of use. The result was a process of conceptual modeling, which resulted in a conceptually novel user interface. Prototyping professional practices of user-centered design lent directionality to this conceptual process in terms of a focus on individual activities with the user interface. Social approaches to software design under the broad umbrella of human-centered computing have been seeking to inform the design on the basis of empirical contributions about a social context. The analysis has shown that empirical engagement with the contexts of use followed from conceptual modeling, and concern about real world contexts was aligned with the user-centered direction that design was taking. I also point out a social-technical gap in the design process in connection with the repeated performance challenges that the platform was facing, and describe the possibility of a social-technical imagination.Ph.D

Optimizing The Design Of Multimodal User Interfaces

Due to a current lack of principle-driven multimodal user interface design guidelines, designers may encounter difficulties when choosing the most appropriate display modality for given users or specific tasks (e.g., verbal versus spatial tasks). The development of multimodal display guidelines from both a user and task domain perspective is thus critical to the achievement of successful human-system interaction. Specifically, there is a need to determine how to design task information presentation (e.g., via which modalities) to capitalize on an individual operator\u27s information processing capabilities and the inherent efficiencies associated with redundant sensory information, thereby alleviating information overload. The present effort addresses this issue by proposing a theoretical framework (Architecture for Multi-Modal Optimization, AMMO) from which multimodal display design guidelines and adaptive automation strategies may be derived. The foundation of the proposed framework is based on extending, at a functional working memory (WM) level, existing information processing theories and models with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and other allied sciences. The utility of AMMO lies in its ability to provide designers with strategies for directing system design, as well as dynamic adaptation strategies (i.e., multimodal mitigation strategies) in support of real-time operations. In an effort to validate specific components of AMMO, a subset of AMMO-derived multimodal design guidelines was evaluated with a simulated weapons control system multitasking environment. The results of this study demonstrated significant performance improvements in user response time and accuracy when multimodal display cues were used (i.e., auditory and tactile, individually and in combination) to augment the visual display of information, thereby distributing human information processing resources across multiple sensory and WM resources. These results provide initial empirical support for validation of the overall AMMO model and a sub-set of the principle-driven multimodal design guidelines derived from it. The empirically-validated multimodal design guidelines may be applicable to a wide range of information-intensive computer-based multitasking environments

The Design of an Interactive Topic Modeling Application for Media Content

Topic Modeling has been widely used by data scientists to analyze the increasing amount of text documents. Documents can be assigned to a distribution of topics with techniques like LDA or NMF, that are related to unsupervised soft clustering but consider text semantics. More recently, Interactive Topic Modeling (ITM) has been introduced to incorporate human expertise in the modeling process. This enables real-time hyperparameter optimization and topic manipulation on document and keyword level. However, current ITM applications are mostly accessible to experienced data scientists, who lack domain knowledge. Domain experts, on the other hand, usually lack the data science expertise to build and use ITM applications. This thesis presents an Interactive Topic Modeling application accessible to non-technical data analysts in the broadcasting domain. The application allows domain experts, like journalists, to explore themes in various produced media content in a dynamic, intuitive and efficient manner. An interactive interface, with an embedded NMF topic model, enables users to filter on various data sources, configure and refine the topic model, interpret and evaluate the output by visualizations, and analyze the data in wider context. This application was designed in collaboration with domain experts in focus group sessions, according to human-centered design principles. An evaluation study with ten participants shows that journalists and data analysts without any natural language processing knowledge agree that the application is not only usable, but also very user-friendly, effective and efficient. A SUS score of 81 was received, and user experience and user perceptions of control questionnaires both received an average of 4.1 on a five-point Likert scale. The ITM application thus enables this specific user group to extract meaningful topics from their produced media content, and use these results in broader perspective to perform exploratory data analysis. The success of the final application design presented in this thesis shows that the knowledge gap between data scientists and domain experts in the broadcasting field has been filled. In bigger perspective; machine learning applications can be made more accessible by translating hidden low-level details of complex models into high-level model interactions, presented in a user interface